The implication, of course, is that everyone is presumed a terrorist (even if temporarily disarmed). The NSA only spies on terrorists because if you're not a terrorist then they wouldn't be spying on you! Finally, the ACLU only defends terrorists because the only people who need civil liberties have something to hide, and are therefore terrorists.
It certainly does not seem fair, but we're all potential terrorists. Potential terrorists have no rights in Bush's America. This is why blindly trusting your government to solve your problems has always been a bad idea.
Slow down there. How is relying on the government an "intrusion"? If we can't rely on the government for anything then it's not much of a government, is it? What you're trying to say is that we should not allow the government to control the people, in which case you should be warning us about authoritarianism. You've fallaciously made a connection between wanting an effective government and wanting a dominating government. These concerns are actually contradictory; when my government spies on me it's not doing a very good job taking care of me.
If you want a great example of a government that did next to nothing to take care of its people, take a look at the Soviet Union. Believe me, very few in the USSR could rely on their government.
> Co-Sponsors Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) and Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-NC)
Bolded for emphasis.
They're from red states. Of course they're going to be trying to pander to the think-of-the-children types. Democrats need to be elected too, you know. You may as well pick out the few pro-life Democrats and immediately conclude that both parties want to eliminate women's rights. Or pick out the few Republicans who stood against the flag desecration amendment and say that both parties support the first amendment.
How clever! I never would have suspected that Al Gore was behind his own movie! I mean, he only narrated the entire thing. His name was only mentioned a few times during the movie. How were we supposed to know? What an amazing revelation you have brought us! But... why would he try to deceive us like this?
The only thing that's really shocking is that people on the 'global warming is real' side think that the people who disagree with them are 100% dupes, and/or manipulative and evile types.
Okay... and how did you reach this conclusion? I've seen Gore's movie and I can assure you that it does not accuse you personally of being manipulative. Of course, when a Republican PR firm releases a video that poses as an amateur work and makes personal attacks against Gore and says that everyone who agrees with him is an idiot, it's only logical to assume that the firm is being manipulative. Do you disagree?
There may be something of a backlash against the new direction of conservative politics in this country. Is this a sign of things to come? Is there hope that the near future will hold less politicization of religion? The optimist in me hopes that people are fed up with politicians exploiting their religious beliefs in these nonsensical confrontations with science. The fact that a pro-evolution Republican is even possible in Kansas gives me hope.
Unfortunately, since the New Deal and the Great Society, US citizens are increasingly comfortable with abdicating their rights and responsibilities to the nanny state.
Not really. The nanny state was in full swing during Prohibition, which came much earlier than the New Deal. Even recently, it's questionable to trace nanny state measures (like the defeated flag desecration amendment) back to social programs that had almost nothing to do with them.
Some sort of libertarian revolution is required
What makes you think that libertarians would handle things any better? People are going to try to scam you when large amounts of money are involved. Private entities are at least as guilty of this as governments. Anyone with a plan to put increased trust in private corporations needs a plan to increase the accountability of said businesses as well. Maybe there's a workable libertarian system, but it isn't the free market worship we see so often on slashdot.
So two rival superpowers armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons aren't dangerous unless one of them has a communist economy? How do you figure? I'd imagine that it would have more to do with the political and military realities of the two nations.
You joke, but they're dead serious. Of the 65 games studied, Super Mario Brothers ranked #5 in the death rate. It earned a whopping 4.8 deaths per minute! This "Mario" guy must be some kind of mass murderer. Read it & weep.
I suspect that the act of chasing Pacman with the intention of destroying him was considered violent. ("...causes or attempts to cause...") The non-violent time must be when Pacman has a power pellet but isn't trying to kill ghosts, or when the ghosts are nowhere near Pacman. Heck, maybe they paused the game to go to the bathroom. It's such a ridiculous measure of violence.
One author (Kevin Haninger) reviewed and coded all of the recorded game play, noting the starting and ending times of each incident of violence toward other characters, the type of weapons used for violence, whether the violent incident resulted in injury or death, and the number of character deaths attributable to the violent incident. The JAMA article contains a table that lists each video game we played, as well as the genre, console, release year, ESRB-assigned content descriptors, and our measures of violence.
So it seems that the number refers to the percentage of time that the game is violent. Now, how is violence defined such that Pacman gets such a brutal rating?
We defined violence as acts in which the aggressor causes or attempts to cause physical injury or death to another character. We did not include damage to objects, accidental actions that unintentionally harmed another character, the effects of natural disasters, or the presence of dangerous obstacles that could not be attributed to the actions of a particular character. We also did not count as violence any intentional acts of physical force that represented normal play in a sports game (e.g., tacking in football or checking in hockey), because the intention of the player is technically to stop the other player without causing injury. We did count excessive physical contact in sports games, such as punching or otherwise attacking another player (e.g., after the football play was over).
If Pacman's ghosts were replaced by rolling boulders, it would have nearly no violence. Discuss.
The really scary implication of the article is that eleven states could band together and make the other 39 completely powerless in a presidential election. Instead of giving all electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, they could give them to the winner of the vote only in those eleven states. So the voter in Montana whose vote used to count triple now has absolutely no say in the election of the president. Quite a system we have, isn't it?
I'd be happy with an implementation of "one man, one vote" in this country, even if it's approximated by a body of electors. Just reduce the number of electoral votes granted to each state by two and we'll be a lot closer to having a government that represents the people.
No, the grandparent is correct. The proposal says nothing about requiring a majority of the votes. In the current system, the winner could not only have gotten a minority of the votes, but they could have gotten fewer votes than another cadidate. The electoral system requires the winner to have a majority of the electoral votes, which is not at all the same thing as a majority of the popular votes.
With the electoral colelge, it's like we are working with ints. The division is not exact. We need to move to floating point if we want all votes to be equal.
Not exactly. The electoral college was designed to give less populated states more power per capita. A voter in Montana has over triple the voting power of a voter in New York. This is not an integer rounding issue; this is an intentional imbalance of power.
So you went on that tirade about "self-agnostic complaints," hypocrisy, and the "debate between Darwinism and Creationism" all because the phrase 'according to evolutionary theory' was omitted from a Fox News online article? You've got to be kidding me.
And that doesn't mean these things are unknowable, and it certainly doesn't mean that there isn't or can't be a high being then ourselves such as "God" and it also doesn't mean that such a higher being could not have created us as lower lifeforms then themselves.
It doesn't mean that there aren't invisible pink elephants controlling the subspace fabric. Should we rewrite the textbooks now?
One problem with your argument is that it's generic. The same argument, unmodified, could be used against any assertion anyone has ever made. For example, you could argue against a heliocentric model of the solar system by calling it an unproven theory. You might claim that there are aspects of the universe we don't understand, and that we can't discount the possibility that the Earth is actually at the center. But we 'know' that the Earth is not at the center in the same way that we 'know' that creationism is false: a dearth of evidence in support and a wealth of evidence against. Otherwise we'd have to be careful where we walk, lest we step on an invisible pink trunk.
It is people like you, hundreds of years ago that thought the Earth was the center of the universe, because they believed nothing could be bigger than themselves either.
It's not exactly the pinnacle of humility to trace your lineage to a divine being, now is it? Ancient monarchs claimed to be of divine descent as well. Recent monarchs claimed to be ordained by a higher being. That's where you're coming from and no, there's nothing humble about it.
Another poster mentioned the unscientific nature of this sentence; "might be" would be better language than "are."
Right criticism; wrong solution. Adding uncertainty does nothing to make the statement more scientific. You need to attribute the statement. Say whose work it's based on. If there's a general scientific consensus, say so.
No, not at all. Perhaps you're unfamiliar with what a neocon is understood to be. Or pehaps you've never read Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, which criticize many political elements present in modern neoconservatism.
As in he was trying to find the Philosopher's Stone (or the Soceror's Stone for Americans)?
We Americans call it the Philosopher's Stone as well. According to wikipedia, that one silly children's novel was renamed for the US release because the word "philosopher" was not considered interesting enough. How insulting.
The kind poster was probably attempting to point out a weakness in your satire. Namely, you ignored the critical elements of reproduction and sale. It's a fair criticism.
It sounds like you don't agree with the ACLU's strict interpretation of the second amendment. That doesn't mean that they're not defending your rights; it means that they're not defending your rights the way you'd like them to. Many people don't agree with your loose interpretation of the second amendment, and for them the ACLU is ideal.
But seriously, do you expect them to turn and look the other way when someone is speaking out against them?
You're damn right I do. Anti-government speech is not the same as anti-American speech. Why should the FBI (and our tax dollars) be used to intimidate political opponents? Criticism of the government is not a suspicious activity; it is in fact a sign of a healthy democracy.
I present a quotation from the article, attributed to David Cole: "The FBI should investigate any credible leads where federal criminal activity may be undertaken. But it should avoid investigating any political conduct."
Don't waste the ink. Muslim extremists want us to ban abortions and outlaw homosexuality too, but no one has suggested that we meet those demands. Does that surprise you? But it's true; no one has suggested even once that the terrorists should be appeased!
However, if the foreign policy is stupid then it should be changed. Neither you nor anyone in this thread has given a single reason why a stupid foreign policy is desirable. But lo, as soon as someone suggests that we need a change, here come the defenders of the status quo! And so 'change' mysteriously becomes 'appease' and all rationality is summarily discarded.
Slashdot Mirror
The implication, of course, is that everyone is presumed a terrorist (even if temporarily disarmed). The NSA only spies on terrorists because if you're not a terrorist then they wouldn't be spying on you! Finally, the ACLU only defends terrorists because the only people who need civil liberties have something to hide, and are therefore terrorists.
It certainly does not seem fair, but we're all potential terrorists. Potential terrorists have no rights in Bush's America. This is why blindly trusting your government to solve your problems has always been a bad idea.
Slow down there. How is relying on the government an "intrusion"? If we can't rely on the government for anything then it's not much of a government, is it? What you're trying to say is that we should not allow the government to control the people, in which case you should be warning us about authoritarianism. You've fallaciously made a connection between wanting an effective government and wanting a dominating government. These concerns are actually contradictory; when my government spies on me it's not doing a very good job taking care of me.
If you want a great example of a government that did next to nothing to take care of its people, take a look at the Soviet Union. Believe me, very few in the USSR could rely on their government.
> Co-Sponsors Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) and Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-NC)
Bolded for emphasis.
They're from red states. Of course they're going to be trying to pander to the think-of-the-children types. Democrats need to be elected too, you know. You may as well pick out the few pro-life Democrats and immediately conclude that both parties want to eliminate women's rights. Or pick out the few Republicans who stood against the flag desecration amendment and say that both parties support the first amendment.
How clever! I never would have suspected that Al Gore was behind his own movie! I mean, he only narrated the entire thing. His name was only mentioned a few times during the movie. How were we supposed to know? What an amazing revelation you have brought us! But... why would he try to deceive us like this?
Okay... and how did you reach this conclusion? I've seen Gore's movie and I can assure you that it does not accuse you personally of being manipulative. Of course, when a Republican PR firm releases a video that poses as an amateur work and makes personal attacks against Gore and says that everyone who agrees with him is an idiot, it's only logical to assume that the firm is being manipulative. Do you disagree?
There may be something of a backlash against the new direction of conservative politics in this country. Is this a sign of things to come? Is there hope that the near future will hold less politicization of religion? The optimist in me hopes that people are fed up with politicians exploiting their religious beliefs in these nonsensical confrontations with science. The fact that a pro-evolution Republican is even possible in Kansas gives me hope.
Not really. The nanny state was in full swing during Prohibition, which came much earlier than the New Deal. Even recently, it's questionable to trace nanny state measures (like the defeated flag desecration amendment) back to social programs that had almost nothing to do with them.
What makes you think that libertarians would handle things any better? People are going to try to scam you when large amounts of money are involved. Private entities are at least as guilty of this as governments. Anyone with a plan to put increased trust in private corporations needs a plan to increase the accountability of said businesses as well. Maybe there's a workable libertarian system, but it isn't the free market worship we see so often on slashdot.
So two rival superpowers armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons aren't dangerous unless one of them has a communist economy? How do you figure? I'd imagine that it would have more to do with the political and military realities of the two nations.
What makes Libertarians and Greens immune to corruption? They're probably nowhere near as bad the Republicans, but why single them out?
You joke, but they're dead serious. Of the 65 games studied, Super Mario Brothers ranked #5 in the death rate. It earned a whopping 4.8 deaths per minute! This "Mario" guy must be some kind of mass murderer. Read it & weep.
I suspect that the act of chasing Pacman with the intention of destroying him was considered violent. ("...causes or attempts to cause...") The non-violent time must be when Pacman has a power pellet but isn't trying to kill ghosts, or when the ghosts are nowhere near Pacman. Heck, maybe they paused the game to go to the bathroom. It's such a ridiculous measure of violence.
I managed to dig up a little from a site by the creators of the study. Here's the juicy bit:
So it seems that the number refers to the percentage of time that the game is violent. Now, how is violence defined such that Pacman gets such a brutal rating?
If Pacman's ghosts were replaced by rolling boulders, it would have nearly no violence. Discuss.
The really scary implication of the article is that eleven states could band together and make the other 39 completely powerless in a presidential election. Instead of giving all electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, they could give them to the winner of the vote only in those eleven states. So the voter in Montana whose vote used to count triple now has absolutely no say in the election of the president. Quite a system we have, isn't it?
I'd be happy with an implementation of "one man, one vote" in this country, even if it's approximated by a body of electors. Just reduce the number of electoral votes granted to each state by two and we'll be a lot closer to having a government that represents the people.
No, the grandparent is correct. The proposal says nothing about requiring a majority of the votes. In the current system, the winner could not only have gotten a minority of the votes, but they could have gotten fewer votes than another cadidate. The electoral system requires the winner to have a majority of the electoral votes, which is not at all the same thing as a majority of the popular votes.
So you went on that tirade about "self-agnostic complaints," hypocrisy, and the "debate between Darwinism and Creationism" all because the phrase 'according to evolutionary theory' was omitted from a Fox News online article? You've got to be kidding me.
It doesn't mean that there aren't invisible pink elephants controlling the subspace fabric. Should we rewrite the textbooks now?
One problem with your argument is that it's generic. The same argument, unmodified, could be used against any assertion anyone has ever made. For example, you could argue against a heliocentric model of the solar system by calling it an unproven theory. You might claim that there are aspects of the universe we don't understand, and that we can't discount the possibility that the Earth is actually at the center. But we 'know' that the Earth is not at the center in the same way that we 'know' that creationism is false: a dearth of evidence in support and a wealth of evidence against. Otherwise we'd have to be careful where we walk, lest we step on an invisible pink trunk.
It's not exactly the pinnacle of humility to trace your lineage to a divine being, now is it? Ancient monarchs claimed to be of divine descent as well. Recent monarchs claimed to be ordained by a higher being. That's where you're coming from and no, there's nothing humble about it.Right criticism; wrong solution. Adding uncertainty does nothing to make the statement more scientific. You need to attribute the statement. Say whose work it's based on. If there's a general scientific consensus, say so.
No, not at all. Perhaps you're unfamiliar with what a neocon is understood to be. Or pehaps you've never read Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, which criticize many political elements present in modern neoconservatism.
The kind poster was probably attempting to point out a weakness in your satire. Namely, you ignored the critical elements of reproduction and sale. It's a fair criticism.
It sounds like you don't agree with the ACLU's strict interpretation of the second amendment. That doesn't mean that they're not defending your rights; it means that they're not defending your rights the way you'd like them to. Many people don't agree with your loose interpretation of the second amendment, and for them the ACLU is ideal.
You're damn right I do. Anti-government speech is not the same as anti-American speech. Why should the FBI (and our tax dollars) be used to intimidate political opponents? Criticism of the government is not a suspicious activity; it is in fact a sign of a healthy democracy.
I present a quotation from the article, attributed to David Cole: "The FBI should investigate any credible leads where federal criminal activity may be undertaken. But it should avoid investigating any political conduct."
Don't waste the ink. Muslim extremists want us to ban abortions and outlaw homosexuality too, but no one has suggested that we meet those demands. Does that surprise you? But it's true; no one has suggested even once that the terrorists should be appeased!
However, if the foreign policy is stupid then it should be changed. Neither you nor anyone in this thread has given a single reason why a stupid foreign policy is desirable. But lo, as soon as someone suggests that we need a change, here come the defenders of the status quo! And so 'change' mysteriously becomes 'appease' and all rationality is summarily discarded.